GENERAL MEETING. 7 
These generally admitted facts were insusceptible of scientific 
explanation by the marsh fever hypothesis of Lanscisci; but were 
capable of explanation by the theory that marsh fevers are pro. 
duced by the bites of proboscidian insects, notably in this and in 
some other countries by mosquito bites. 
A review of the natural history, habits, and geographical distri- 
bution of the mosquito was next presented in explanation of the 
twenty statements above quoted. 
In discussing statement 15, it was maintained that the compara- 
tive immunity of the black races was largely due to color, the dark 
complexion of the skin being another illustrative instance of “ pro- 
tective coloring ” so often observed in other animals, and by which, 
in this instance, the negro was protected from the sight, and conse- 
quently from the dite of the mosquito; a similar protection being 
further secured by the offensive odor and greasiness of his cutaneous 
secretions, aided by artificial inunction of the body with grease, 
paint, pitch, &c., which last probably constituted the initial step in 
the evolution of dress. Hence malarial melanosis was considered 
to be the designed natural termination of ague—its conservative 
function—destined to modify the individual by defensive adaptation 
against the mosquito, whose penetrating proboscis, like an inoculat- 
ing needle, infected the body with malarial poison, no matter 
whether this last was mosquital saliva, the Bacillus malarie of 
Klebs and Crudelli, or some other element as yet unknown. 
The spleen, whose function is not yet settled by physiologists, 
was regarded as the chief pigment-forming organ, and was designed 
for this purpose in the economy of the organism. Generally con- 
sidered a superfluous organ, capable of removal without any great 
interference with the functions of the organism, it was naturally 
designed to meet the emergency of variation in skin-color to secure 
“ protective coloring ” against fever-producing proboscidian insects, 
as before indicated. The natural process, however, required expo- 
sure of the naked body to the sun during the chill stage, in order 
to secure deposit of the newly formed pigment in the skin. Nature 
had not anticipated the artificial appendage of dress, and the organ- 
ism had not inherited from ancestral progenitors any provision for 
so unexpected an addition. Chills do not occur at night, but only 
between the rise and setting of the sun; sunlight during the chill 
stage being a necessary requirement, in order that nature’s design 
of cutaneous chromatogenesis may be consummated. Other racial 
